Second P11 that I've done a polishing job on, I'm personally not a fan of bling, but it's starting to grow on me. Started at 320 grit due to the poor surface quality, up to 1000. Then it went to the wheel, total hours-6.

>>2224The last one I did was a buddies CCW, he does construction and carries IWB for the past couple months, he claims he wipes it off with a silicone towel before bed. So far no rust on the surface. Keep in mind polished steel does have more resistance to oxidization than a normal surface.

>>2232Soak slide/barrel in Vinegar for 1 hour, use a scotchbrite pad to scrub parkerizing finish off.

I started at 320 grit paper and wet sanded up too 1500 grit.

Liberal usage of bench buffing wheel, finished with Mothers Mag and Aluminum polish by hand.
That's a simplified version, took a lot of trial and error, Keltecs surface quality is pretty rough under that parkerizing, had to remove quite a bit of surface imperfections.

Having polished a few things in the "european stick up ass" method, I can say that it's a fuckton of trouble and work. I did the buttplate, the action, the barrel, the bolt, and the recoil lug. No good pics of those, I'll take some eventually.

Method went as follows:
>Rough file any bumps off. File until divots caused from filing said bumps are evened out with the entire workpiece, all over.
>Fine file until rough file marks are gone, filing any remaining divots, bumps, or dips of any size, blending the whole surface together
>180 sandpaper until file marks are gone (all the file marks)
>240 sandpaper at a 90 degree angle from the 180grit until all the 180 grit marks are gone
>320, perpendicular to 240
>400, perpendicular to 320
>400 again
>600 along the longest length in the workpiece
>600 until all 400 marks are gone
>800 until all 600 marks are gone
At 600 to 800, examine under bright light and magnification to see if ANY marks from previous grits remain. If they do, go back down a grit and start the whole thing all over again, all over the piece. This is important as you don't want a wave/wobble to build up from spot-sanding.
>polishing wheel with 555+ fine paste can be used at this stage for some parts, but anything with edges are no-go

I stopped at 1000 grit for my parts, seemed shiny enough. All by hand, took about 4 days of sanding 5 hours per day for all the parts from saw-cut/big grain sandblast parkerization.

If I did something like pic related again for a customer or something, it would not be cheap.

Pic is the buttplate and tung oil finished stock (similar process, less work but more drying time between 600 grit tung coats or final rubbings with a few drops of tung and my palm). I fitted the screws so they'd line up straight.